Xperia Z sighted at Sony booth ahead of CES launch

by KS Sandhya Iyer, 7 January 2013

In the past few weeks, we've reported various leaks pertaining to the Sony Xperia Z (aka Sony C660X Yuga). Now, Engadget caught a glimpse of the device at the Sony booth in Las Vegas. The image seems to be identical to the one spotted on Sony's official website a few days ago.

Though there were no mentions of the specs, but past rumours have indicated that the Xperia Z sports a 5-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) display at 440ppi with Sony's Mobile Bravia Engine and runs on Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage, which is expandable by another 128GB.

Other features include a 12-megapixel rear camera (as opposed to the 16-megapixel mentioned earlier), Micro-USB as well as USB host mode, 802.11 a/b/g/n in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz modes, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE and NFC.

In more recent leaks, the Xperia blog posted few more pictures of the device via Chinese social networking site Sina Weibo and ePrice. The images appear to be screenshots from a promotional video for the device highlighting various specs of the smartphone.

They confirm a number of features of the smartphone including a water resistant body, HDR on videos and photos, a "Full-HD Reality display", 13MP Exmor RS camera, OptiContrast panel and a "Skeleton frame structure".

With so much evidence, we'd expect Sony to reveal its new flagship device at its CES conference soon. As far the pricing details are concerned, previous leaks have suggested a Thai pricing of 19,990 Baht, which translates to about $660 or 500 euros or Rs.36,000 rupees. Other rumours suggested that the device is set to go on sale in China on January 15 for around 4,298 CNY ($690 or €520).

Apart from the Xperia Z, the company is also expected to unveil the Xperia ZL, a slightly thicker, heavier, but smaller version of the Xperia Z. The hardware specifications of the Xperia ZL are yet to be confirmed, though some reports have indicated a 1.5GHz processor and Android Jelly Bean.

Sony is also working on the C530X codenamed HuaShan, which has previously appeared on two benchmarking sites but is most likely to be unveiled at MWC later this year.